Snapshots of Smiles
by mattmetzger
Summary: Snapshots in time of the relationship between Jack and Ianto, with other Ianto-centric mini-shots thrown in there too. An ongoing selection of vignettes. Jack/Ianto, many topics.
1. 1 to 6

**Notes: T****his is going to be an ongoing, infrequently updated series of 'snaps' that make up the little things of happiness. Roughly one and a half to two thousand words a chapter. They will be mostly Jack/Ianto, or based around Ianto. Is it easy to tell he's my favourite character?**

**To make us appreciate what we have. For Dani, who makes me appreciate every day how lucky I am.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Torchwood and I am not making any profit from this work.**

**Snapshots of Smiles**

**One**

"What happened to you?"

Ianto somehow unpeeled his forehead from his forearm and glared up at Jack from where he was lying prone on the sofa. Jack simply grinned back, unabashed, and put his hands on his hips. He had never seen Ianto so dishevelled outside of a sexual situation.

"You had a day off," Jack prodded. "What were you doing in a day off, without me, that got you looking like _that_?"

'That' consisted of the oldest jeans Jack had ever seen, a t-shirt three sizes too big, stained, and severely crumpled, and socks that were making a vigorous bid for the freedom of the floor rather than Ianto's unresponsive feet. Any more rumpled-looking, and there would have to be a five o'clock shadow on his face.

"My nephew happened," Ianto grumbled, burying his face in his crossed arms again. He was lying face down on the sofa, arms crossed on the arm of the furniture, and trying to meld his nose with the cushion.

"You have a nephew?"

"Yes, Jack, I have a nephew. An energetic, three-year-old nephew, whose mother just had _another _nephew. So the older nephew was foisted on me for the day. Hence I needed the day off in the first place."

"Here I was thinking I wore you out," Jack said.

"You wish," Ianto grumbled. "_I _wish," he added after a moment. "A three-year-old is more demanding than you. You're easy to deal with."

"Am I?"

"Yes. Sex. And coffee. Toddlers want fifty-two hundred different things, right now, or they'll scream," Ianto snarled, rolling over to stare up at the ceiling. "Thank God for you," he moaned. "I'm never, ever having children. No way. Not happening. And if I ever want them, sent me round to my sister's for the afternoon."

"Will do," Jack said, lifting up Ianto's feet and sitting on the end of the sofa, putting them back in his lap. "You coming back tomorrow, like you promised?"

"Definitely," Ianto hissed. "I'd take Owen over Jamie. Hell, I'd take Gwen with PMS over sodding Jamie."

"Ouch. Poor baby," Jack said, rubbing firm circles into the underside of Ianto's left foot. Sure enough, Ianto melted, subsiding into the cushions with a contented sigh and offering up the other foot for the same treatment. Preferably at the same time.

"I have you well-trained," Ianto mumbled sleepily.

"Yep."

* * *

**Two**

Jack's coat, while undeniably sexy and fitting all the requirements of making him 'a man in uniform', is incredibly strange.

Ianto is a tailor's son. He knows when a coat fits, and that coat fits. If Jack puts on any weight, it'll strain; if he loses any, it'll sag and look weird. It couldn't fit better if it were made for him.

And yet, somehow, that coat can accompany him as well.

It's one of Jack's little quirks. If he gets to sneak up on Ianto outside, he will open the coat and envelop Ianto into its grey, warm folds, tugging him back against the firm chest beneath. Ianto doesn't mind - he rather likes it, actually - but it really shouldn't be possible. The damn thing can almost _close_ around him, for God's sake.

One day, he'll find out the secret about that coat.

When he can find the will not to just close his eyes and disappear when Jack does that.

* * *

**Three**

"What did you want to be when you were a kid, Ianto?"

"What, sir?"

"Oi."

"Sorry, Jack. What?"

"I asked what you wanted to be when you were a kid."

"Oh. Lots of things."

"Name them."

"All of them?"

"Some of them, then."

"Shit, I don't know. A doctor. A fireman. A policeman. An astronaut. A frog. All the usual stuff little boys want to be."

"Aww, never a pilot?"

"Don't like heights."

"Well, damn."

"Why?"

"Just trying to imagine you as a kid. You seem perpetually grown up."

"You've never seen me drunk. About as mature as a first-year college student, then."

"...Is that an invitation?"

"...Maybe."

* * *

**Four**

Jack was confused. All day, Ianto had been avoiding his kisses. From when the Welshman had come into work, right up until now - and it was almost time to shut down for the night! - he had been avoiding Jack's kisses. And Jack couldn't figure it out.

Ianto hadn't hurt his face or jaw lately.

Jack didn't think he'd done anything wrong.

Hugs were okay - he'd had lots of hugs.

And flirting was still okay, too, there'd been even more flirting.

He'd even made hints about the stopwatch and gotten a good response!

So what the hell was wrong with his kisses today?

Watching jealously from the office as Tosh waved goodbye to Ianto and got a cheery farewell, Jack waited only until the cog door had rolled shut before stalking down the steps and glowering at the back of Ianto's head.

"Something wrong, sir?"

"Yes," Jack snapped. "With you, apparently."

"With me?" Ianto looked faintly surprised, and turned to stare at Jack properly. "There's nothing wrong with me that I'm aware of, sir."

"Well, there must be!" Jack shouted, exasperated.

"Why?" Ianto asked evenly.

"You've been avoiding me!"

"Hardly."

"Fine, avoiding my kisses! Same damn thing!"

"I've been...well, yes," Ianto rolled his eyes. "It's hardly appropriate, is it?"

"What, kissing you? I've done everything _else _with you!"

"Not that," Ianto snorted. "Jack, why am I not staying here tonight?"

"You've got that family reunion thing in Newport."

"Yes. And who will be there?"

"...Your family?"

"Duh. My mother, Jack. My very keen-eyed, very interfering, very irritating, very pressurising mother."

"So?"

"So, if I turn up with snog rash, Jack, she is going to notice. And she's not a stupid woman. And then, Bob's your uncle, I am outed to my entire, very Christian family, as being gay. No thank you, Jack, not happening."

"...I do not give you snog rash."

"Oh yes you have."

"When!"

"Lots of times."

"Like when!"

"As in, Owen is thinking of prescribing me creams for what is essentially carpet burn. Jack, get a new razor, or I am not kissing you anywhere near any _possibility _of my mother - or anyone else in my family - seeing me or it."

"...But..."

Ianto rolled his eyes.

"I'll get you some new ones tomorrow, shall I?" he asked wearily, and turned to go.

"Ianto?"

"What?"

"Promise I can have a kiss in the morning?"

"Yes, Jack, I promise."

* * *

**Five**

Jack likes hands.

It's one of the weirdest things about him, but one way to keep him content to let him play with your fingers. Ianto realised this early on their relationship, and now, a year and a half later, still found it hilarious.

Jack had literally taken his hand, while Ianto was reading a book with the other, and started playing with it. Moving the fingers around to flex the knuckles, or to make them stand out and press against the skin, or examine the joints and tendons of each individual finger, or trace the grooves in Ianto's palm. He would proceed to kiss each finger and the thumb almost reverently, then turn it over, kiss the palm, and return it to where it had been.

The first time he'd done, Ianto had lowered his book and stared at him the whole time, waiting for Jack to notice him again. When he did, the American looked affronted.

"What?" he demanded indignantly, as if he had been doing something totally normal.

Ianto had just shaken his head and returned to his reading.

If that _was _normal in Jack's time, Ianto was happy being a twentieth-century guy.

* * *

**Six**

"Please, Yan!"

"No, Jack. All you'll do is ogle my backside for the entire day."

"That's the _point_."

"I know. And nothing would get done. Which would mean I'd have to do it. So no. I do enough of your work as it is."

"Please, Ianto?"

"Jack, what are you doing?"

"Gwen! Help me! Ianto's refusing to wear jeans at work!"

"What? Oh, go on, Ianto, it would be fun! You always dress so smart..."

"Jack would get no work done. And by the way you're looking at me, you wouldn't either."

"Yan, what if I said, that if you did this, I would give you a whole day off as thanks?"

"Really?"

"Yes."

"With no Rift interruptions?"

"Wouldn't call you in unless it was life or death."

"...Promise?"

"Yes."

"Fine. I'll wear the stupid jeans tomorrow."


	2. 7 to 13

**Notes: if anyone wants any of these snapshots developed into something longer, feel free to ask. I can't promise it'll happen, but I'll give it a go.**

**Seven**

Everyone always says that Jack is the charmer, but, he reflects, it's Ianto who has a lot more power, really. Ianto can not only be charming, when he wants to be, but deadly. Ianto in fierce mode is much scarier than Jack in fierce mode - even Gwen agrees on that one.

But here, in the sterile, cool atmosphere of the hospital, Jack knows that the charm is not for the benefit of the giggling, blushing nurse who obviously thinks that God has rained blessings down upon her in the form of a shirtless, charming, smiling Ianto Jones. It's not for the benefit of the eagle-eyed doctor who pounces upon new bruises and new symptoms like a rabid terrier.

It's for Jack.

The knife had come close - the angry, screaming red gash across the top of Ianto's shoulder bears a grim testimony to that - but Ianto had sworn and calmly decided that an ambulance might be best because although that wasn't a nicked artery, it was a bloody big vein. He had joked with the paramedics, calmly delivered his medical facts to the nurses, smiled and chatted to the doctor in the emergency room. He'd even smiled through the stitches and the burning antiseptics.

And Jack knew it was to quell his fear.

He gave back, in his own way - tried to smile back and calm down and remember that it had been close, but it hadn't been an _end_...but it wouldn't really work.

Not yet.

Not so fast.

* * *

**Eight**

There is one aspect in which Jack really dislikes Ianto.

Language.

The whole team knew that Ianto spoke Welsh. Whenever he got pissed, he spoke Welsh. He shouted Welsh at the computers or filing cabinet drawers when they refused to cooperate. He conducted a good fifty percent of his phone calls in Welsh. Everybody knew he spoke Welsh.

Problem for Jack was that English and Welsh weren't Ianto's only languages.

He had been good at languages at school. To top it off, he'd done exchanges in two countries, lived next door to a Pole most of his childhood, and, worst of all, had an A-level in German by the time he was sixteen.

And Ianto had never _lost _that brilliance for languages.

Nowadays, Ianto spoke English, German and Welsh fluently. Italian came a close fourth, followed by passable, conversation-level Polish and Russian. And he used them. Frequently. He had foreign friends he spoke to on the phone, he apparently dreamed in Welsh and German, judging by what he muttered in his sleep, and, of course, he used them to annoy Jack.

Because Jack was apparently incapable of learning that demanding a response _didn't _demand one in any language he understood.

And Ianto exploited that.

But what was the worst bit of all was that _Jack _knew non-English languages. Future ones, off-planet ones, ones he _knew _Ianto wouldn't be able to speak. Some of them hadn't even evolved yet.

But Ianto was never curious about what Jack was saying, unlike Jack's curiosity about what Ianto was saying.

Maybe Boeshanian just...didn't sound sexy enough.

* * *

**Nine**

Jack knew this was going to be really embarrassing when Gwen came in tomorrow and found them, but that didn't stop him from sitting down in front of the sofa and tucking the blanket more carefully around Ianto. The Welshman had crashed onto the sofa about an hour ago and fallen asleep, and now Jack was going to sit in front of him with a nice book, and hold Ianto's hand.

And it was unbearably sappy, and stupid, and would be completely embarrassing, and she would undoubtedly dredge up the CCTV footage later and stick it on a Valentine's card next February to torture the pair of them, but Jack decided that he would deal with that later.

* * *

**Ten**

"Jack?"

"Yeeeeees?"

"What are you doing?"

"Are you cross?"

"I don't know yet. What are you doing?"

"Nothing, Yan, nothing at all."

"It doesn't feel like nothing."

"Well, it is nothing."

"Mhmm. So why are your hands inside my trousers?"

"Because it's warm in there."

"It's warm in the generator room, Jack, why don't you go and play with the electrics for a while?"

"You're electric enough."

"God, Jack!"

"What?"

"Worst line in the world! Get out of there."

"Why?!"

"No cheese in my clothing, thank you."

"Aww, Yan! It wasn't _that _bad!"

"Maybe not to you, Mr Subtlety. But to the sane, mortal world, yes it was."

"Please?"

"No. Shoo."

"Please?"

"No, Jack! Not until I finish my work."

"Okay."

"...What?"

"Jones, I'm relieving you of all duties until seven o'clock tomorrow morning."

"...Oh shit."

* * *

**Eleven**

Technology, in the end, became the crux of Jack's life. By the time Ianto died, he had a million recordings of the man's voice on phones, CCTV recordings, anything you like. And though the technology died and new gadgets came along, there was always a transition period.

So now, eons after the death of that particular Ianto Jones, Jack still carries his voice around in his pocket, in his head, in his heart. He can't forget, because he always has a reminder.

And that will just have to do, because he can't keep anything more.

* * *

**Twelve**

One night, when exploring Ianto's body, in the languid, lazy stage before the frantic, desperate stage, Jack found something he hadn't noticed before.

"What's that?" he'd asked, poking the tiny white scar that tumbled over Ianto's collarbone delicately.

"Huh?" Ianto twisted his head to look, and blinked. "Oh. Old scar."

"From what?" Jack insisted, poking it again, then rubbing his fingers over it in quiet apology.

"My sister, I think," Ianto said, and felt it himself. "Yeah, my sister. She bit me."

"She _bit _you?!"

"Yes."

"Why?!"

"I don't know," Ianto said. "Can't remember. I was only four."

"And she was...?"

"Three."

"Is that normal?" Jack blinked.

"I have no idea, Jack. Didn't you have a sister?"

"No. Younger or otherwise. No sisters."

"Lucky," Ianto grimaced. "I had three. That was Ree, I think. Must have been Ree or Kerry, Charis wasn't born yet."

"Sisters are evil," Jack decided. "Did you bite her back?"

"No," Ianto said. "But I ripped the head off her doll later."

Jack can't quite imagine a spiteful Ianto, even as a kid, and gives him a slightly doubtful look before deciding that maybe it was the prelude to the manipulative Welshman before him right now.

"What?" Ianto said.

"Nothing."

* * *

**Thirteen**

In his long life, Jack will have flings, relationships, romances, friendships, with all kinds of people, human and not. He will sleep with people of every nationality, scream with people not of this planet, find joy and happiness outside of the broken ozone of the Earth.

But at the end, when time begins to finally wind down and Jack is allowed to finally leave, he will not have changed his mind.

The thing that brought him calm, the most peace and serenity in his ages-long life, was the sleepy murmur of broken Welsh, words he didn't understand and never translated, in a warm, dark room, and the searing heat of the sleeping body next to his.

At the end of all things, it was only the small things that he remembered, and they that he held above all else.


	3. 14 to 20

**Notes: if anyone wants any of these snapshots developed into something longer, feel free to ask. I can't promise it'll happen, but I'll give it a go. On a related note, I really can't think of a way to extend #9 and #10 out into proper oneshots for the moment, so those might be a long time in coming.**

**Fourteen**

A cat yowls somewhere outside, and Ianto jerks awake with a strangled gasp. For a moment, he lies tense and rigid, wondering what woke him, then the bed shifts and warm arms tug him back against a chest flushed with warmth from sleep.

"Too early," his partner mumbles heavily, breath ghosting along Ianto's neck, and Ianto resettles.

In the warmth of the bed, the embrace, and the love, sleep is not evasive, and silence reigns again.

* * *

**Fifteen**

The photo is new, because it hasn't been there before, and when Ianto disappears into his kitchen saying something about dinner, Jack investigates.

He recognises Ianto's sister from other photos, and grins. It's a photo of the pair of them, surrounded by Bronwen's _tribe _of children. The sixth is clearly on the way, judging by the fact that no fatness forms that perfect shape of 'baby bump', and Jack feels minutely sorry for Ianto, who has heavy babysitting duties as it is.

But something else strikes a chord.

Ianto could _easily _pass for the father in the photograph. Not only do he and Bronwen look nothing like each other, all the brood are collected round him like a favourite relative. Which he probably is, because he accepts crayon drawings and sticks them on his fridge, and doesn't mind being screamed at down a phone by an enthusiastic four-year-old who hasn't figured out yet that you're not trying to communicate across a football stadium.

He looks...so at ease with them. He's got them clustered around his legs, and one of the twins on each hip, and he's giving whoever took the photo (probably his brother in law) his shy little smile that always makes Jack want to wrap him up and protect him from _everything_.

He looks..._normal_, in his jeans and jacket and ruffled hair and laden down with kids, one of whom looks suspiciously like he's raiding Ianto's pockets for sweets.

"Jack, what are you _doing_?"

"Nothing," Jack calls, and props the photo back on the TV where it's meant to be.

He won't impose on Ianto's tiny piece of normal.

* * *

**Sixteen**

It's the oddest thing to think about when two teammates have _died_, but Jack is struck, in the dead of night, by how much more it's going to be because those lost are who they were.

Obviously, losing a doctor and a technical expert are severe losses to Torchwood as an organisation. It would have been less damaging, logically, to lose Gwen or Ianto, though no less damaging to Jack.

But it's the fact that the team now consists of himself, Gwen and Ianto that is so worryingly.

Because, frankly, Gwen and Ianto have never exactly gotten on.

Oh, they've never been hostile, and certainly don't have the same tension that Ianto and Owen always had. But they're not even remotely close, and Jack isn't totally sure they've even spoken to each other unless it was necessary. They seem to tolerate each other, but not comfortably, and not happily.

And he knows it's about him.

He knows that Ianto - insecure Ianto, so long the invisible shadow lurking around the edges of the stage in the play that was Torchwood - doesn't trust Gwen around Jack. Gwen's never really hidden her soft spot for Jack, and Ianto seems to have some mental block in believing in his own worth. Jack _knows _that Ianto is just waiting for Jack to get bored with him and turn back to Gwen.

So he keeps Gwen at a careful arm's length, because she can't betray him if she's not his friend, and Gwen responds accordingly. Jack isn't sure she understands Ianto's distance from her, but she knows it's there, and she isn't willing to bridge the gap.

She doesn't want to, Jack doesn't know how, and Ianto...Ianto wants that distance there in the first place.

And it makes the whole sad, sorry situation so much worse.

* * *

**Seventeen**

There's a complexity about Ianto that fascinates Jack.

Ianto is both aware and unaware of what he means to Jack.

He is unaware, in the sense that he doesn't seem to be able to make sense of the times Jack worries about him, or goes out with him, or kisses him until they're both breathless but has no inclination to drag him off to bed. Then, Ianto gets a look on his face that is demanding Jack to explain _why _he does it. And when Jack does stupid things, or runs away for adventures, Ianto's always waiting for him when he returns, because he isn't important to question Jack's actions.

But Ianto is also _aware _of what he means to Jack. He knows that his affections are like a drug to Jack, and is happy to withdraw them as punishment. Ianto has a resilience Jack can only dream of, and can last without sex a hell of a lot longer than Jack is apparently able to. And worse, even though Ianto won't call Jack on his shit directly, Jack knows when he's fucked up when he visits Ianto's apartments and finds the sofa made up for him to sleep on.

Ianto knows of his power over Jack sexually, physically, mentally.

But he is ignorant of his power over Jack emotionally, and that's the part that Jack hates.

* * *

**Eighteen**

"Ianto?" Jack calls, looking up from the file he's reading. He's not sure why the police have passed this over - looks like a human crime to him, but he might want to check on that.

"Yeah?"

"You've got sisters, haven't you?"

"Yes."

"Do they hate each other?"

Ianto and Gwen exchange puzzled looks, and peer up at Jack curiously.

"Some of the time. Why?"

"They're saying Jenny's sister killed her. Just wondering if that was likely."

"Well, it'll depend on the family," Gwen said. "Didn't you have any sisters, Jack?"

"Nope," Jack said.

"You can have one of mine," Ianto offered. "I'll give you Ceri, she's nicer than the others."

"How many have you got?" Gwen asked.

"Four."

"Ouch," she winced. "My one was enough. I hated _my_ sister."

"Ceri and Rhi hate each other," Ianto nodded. "But Bronnie and Rhi get on like a house on fire. But then, everybody likes Bronnie. She and Jack should meet sometime."

"One Jones is enough for me," Jack muttered, nose-deep in the file, and Gwen's eyebrows shot skyward.

"Wearing him out, Ianto?" she asked, and grinned when Ianto had to hastily turn away.

* * *

**Nineteen**

Jack happens upon the true definition of love one wet and drizzly morning. Love is standing under an umbrella, in howling Welsh weather, just to make sure your boyfriend gets to his car safely, even though you could watch through the CCTV cameras. But then, if you did that, he wouldn't turn and wave his keys at you in that sarcastic way that you'd hate if it didn't turn his coat so you could eye up that long, lean thigh. And being willing to stand in the Welsh rain to do that...that's love.

* * *

**Twenty**

Jack putters through the flat in a happily domesticated manner. He checks the messages on the machine and scribbles the names of the callers on the yellow sticky-note pad by the phone. He checks there isn't anything ready to go off in the fridge, and feeds the cat that doesn't like him on the best of days, let alone a cold and miserable day like today. He flicks through the mail and sorts 'junk' from 'real', and the 'real' into 'urgent bills' and 'urgent letters from scary relatives' on the coffee table. He checks the door locks work properly, that nobody's broken in, nothing is missing, and utterly nothing is disturbed.

Then, routine done, he slips into the bedroom and sits down by the door, content to watch his partner sleep for the moment, and cherish the little things.


	4. 21 to 26

**Notes: if anyone wants any of these snapshots developed into something longer, feel free to ask. I can't promise it'll happen, but I'll give it a go. Also, this set are for Rachel and Paraxenos for their wonderful and uplifting reviews. Thanks, guys.**

**Twenty-One**

After learning of the millions upon billions of alternate dimensions running parallel to their own, Jack had always known what he would do if he found himself in one. He wouldn't seek out himself, or the Doctor, or even Rose. He would find Ianto. He would explore Ianto's life all over again, and if Ianto didn't need him or want him, that would be okay, because Ianto would exist.

Ianto did a hell of a lot for Jack by simply existing.

* * *

**Twenty-Two**

Jack only ever saw Ianto's Mam's house the one time. He really didn't know what to expect from Mrs Jones, but she hadn't given him much chance to figure her out. It turned out that, in the company of her many children and grandchildren, the fact that Mrs Jones was fifty-three did absolutely nothing to hinder her rushing about to make sure everything was perfect.

It had been a Sunday lunch, which were apparently only to be missed on pain of death for the Jones children, and Ianto had coerced Jack into going too.

And Jack couldn't complain, because it gave him plenty of teasing material.

For all his reclusive tendencies at work, and his essentially bachelor status from his relationship with Jack rarely leaving the Hub anyway, Ianto was clearly the man of the house, despite the presence of various brothers-in-law. On their one visit, he had to kill three spiders, help serve dinner, play football in the garden with Bronnie's twins, catch as much of the rugby as possible with his brothers-in-law, handle Welsh phone calls from varying relatives, and keep his mother away from Jack as much as possible.

But the best bit was evidence of Ianto's being the only boy in his generation.

Because to his mother and all of his sisters, Ianto was _still_, at twenty-five years of age and towering almost a foot above his mother in height, referred to as 'baby'.

* * *

**Twenty-Three**

Despite what Gwen and Tosh seemed to think, and rather more in favour of what Owen seemed to think, Ianto was not an especially affectionate man. Jack had expected the behind-closed-doors nature of their relationship from the start, because Ianto really didn't seem to like other people knowing much at all about his affairs, but he hadn't really counted on Ianto being reclusive _naturally_. He was reclusive even when it was just the two of them.

The nearest Ianto had ever come to showing that he needed Jack was the night he had, essentially, moved into the Hub with him. And that had been done sneakily - Jack had literally woken up in his sleep-space to find Ianto in bed with him, fast asleep and in just his boxers. And that said a lot. Ianto stripped down no further than trousers and shirt if he was going to sleep at the Hub, and he slept upstairs on the sofa anyway.

To find him near-naked and in bed with Jack, when Jack knew he hadn't gotten up to anything or been drunk enough to _forget_ getting up to anything was suspicious.

"Yan," he'd murmured, shaking his shoulder a little to rouse him. Ianto grumbled and gave Jack a swat in return. Jack laughed, but persisted until a sleepy blue eye cracked open and scowled at him. "What's this for?"

"Lemme sleep," Ianto mumbled.

"Why are you sleeping _here_?" Jack insisted. "Did something happen?"

"No," Ianto snapped, burying his face in Jack's shoulder. "Just felt like it. Now shut _up."_

_That _was the moment that Jack knew this was for real, and for the long haul.

* * *

**Twenty-Four**

Gwen appeared like a wraith in the conference room, where Jack was enjoying breakfast and a DVD, let out a mournful wail, and collapsed into one of the chairs.

"What happened?" Jack asked, not taking his eyes off the film.

"Ianto happened! Rhys happened!" she snapped, and paused the film. "Jack, keep your boyfriend away from my husband!"

That sounded really, really, _really _wrong, and Jack nearly spat out his mouthful of food. As it was, he choked, coughed, and managed it, before croaking: "_What?!_"

"You heard me," Gwen groused. "Ianto got tickets to the rugby and took Rhys and a couple of his mates. Cos he knew I wouldn't go, and you just...well, you just don't understand rugby, Jack."

That was true. Jack really didn't understand the object of Welsh affection in sport whatsoever.

"What's wrong with that?" Jack asked.

"Rhys took Ianto round the local for a couple of pints afterwards," Gwen said gloomily. "We won," she added, "so they were in a good mood, obviously, and..."

This was actually making Jack's assumptions worse, and he motioned for her to hurry up.

"Jack! Ianto and Rhys swapped embarrassing stories about me!" Gwen exploded.

So did Jack - with laughter. Okay, it was mixed with relief, but that was pretty good.

"Jack!" Gwen yelled.

Then she looked like she was going to throw something at him, so he abandoned his breakfast and made a run for it, grabbing his mobile as he fled the conference room.

He was _so _calling Ianto once he was in a safe place.

* * *

**Twenty-Five**

It's the grip of Ianto's hand on his that stops Jack panicking. There's blood everywhere, and Ianto's getting whiter and whiter, and Owen is swearing in French, and Jack didn't even know that Owen _spoke_ French, but Ianto's hand is still clamped tight around Jack's, and he holds on to that little piece of knowledge both physically and mentally.

"Still here, Ianto, still with me, mate?" Owen is demanding, and Jack answers for him, because Ianto is just lying still and silent, as if it's too much effort to respond.

"He's still here," he whispers. "He's gripping my hand."

"Flex it - get him to change the grip," Owen snaps, and watches as Jack shifts his grip, and Ianto responds by tighting his own again. "Right," Owen mutters, mildly reassured, and he tightens the strap around Ianto's chest once more in a futile attempt to stop the bleeding.

And then they're lifting him, getting him into the back of the SUV, and Gwen is watching from the driver's seat, and Tosh is yelling at them down the com link, but Jack isn't listening, just holding Ianto's hand, and he's gripping back, and it's okay, it's okay, it's going to be okay.

* * *

**Twenty-Six**

By this time, Jack is well used to Ianto's patterns, and by the time Ianto drops the (thankfully empty) tray, Jack is there to catch it and steady Ianto. He knows what's wrong (lack of food) and the remedy (tea, biscuits, sleep) and how to get a shaky and protesting (and foolish) Ianto around the Hub without an accident.

Gwen is well used to this too, knowing Ianto's tendency (drive) to push himself too far and not notice until it's too late, and largely ignores them, picking up the abandoned tray and getting out a packet of chocolate digestives from the cupboard for when Jack comes back down from the office. The new members of their team are not so used to it, and hover worriedly in the background, but Gwen waves them off expertly, and makes a mental note to fill them in on the details and what to do about it once Ianto is sorted out.

After all, Jack's not always here to manage it, is he, and Gwen knows they'll have to learn one day.


	5. 27 to 36

**Notes: if anyone wants any of these snapshots developed into something longer, feel free to ask. I can't promise it'll happen, but I'll give it a go. Also, I really can't extend #9, #10, #16 and #22 into full oneshots, so my apologies to the people who requested those. #26 may still be possible, though.**

**Twenty-Seven**

Jack just...doesn't understand people any more. His lifespan has given him too long a time to get over things that other people take lifetimes to recover from. And he doesn't understand, until it's too late and he has destroyed his chance, that heartbreak is not something other people - ordinary, mortal people - can come back from so easily as he can.

And the tragedy is that he doesn't understand that until he sees the angry, broken look in those blue eyes, and realises what he's done.

* * *

**Twenty-Eight**

Sitting in a hospital room and holding that white, cold hand, Jack realised he had discovered love. Because this time, he had been brave enough, despite the fear and heartbreak, to stay, and not make him die alone.

* * *

**Twenty-Nine**

When Jack lost Ianto, it wasn't for a moment how he imagined it. He didn't die, he didn't overdose on retcon, he didn't quit.

He left.

When they rebuilt Torchwood One, Ianto returned to his old life in London. Maybe to regain a piece of Lisa, maybe to regain the life he had there that nobody seemed to know about, maybe to get his old, proper job back.

Maybe for lots of reasons.

But he left.

And the Hub's resident spirit was gone.

And somehow, despite the rest of the team being noisy and young and human all around the place, it seemed empty and quiet without Ianto.

Maybe it always would.

* * *

**Thirty**

Ianto's childhood photographs were the things to convince Jack that Ianto's sombre exterior wasn't really a product of the Battle of Canary Wharf.

He found them one day digging through Ianto's living room for a good DVD to watch, one day ages ago in the summer when Ianto had the flu and the Rift was doing its 'quiet before the storm' trick and Jack got bored. And he found several little albums.

"My old man was a bit mad about photos," Ianto said.

And while Ianto's little sister - fair hair, big smile, very cute between about four and eleven - looked bouncy and happy and like a normal little girl at the park (or gallery or museum or beach or castle or wherever) with her parents, Ianto didn't.

He looked very...serious.

Almost severe.

The school photos were the worst - school blazer, tie, white shirt...all with the pristine appearance of someone with severe OCD. And no expression at all on Ianto's face.

Jack never took the little smiles he could get for granted any more.

* * *

**Thirty-One**

The first time Jack was called to the hospital to pick up Ianto, it hadn't been Torchwood related at all.

He had driven like a madman to get there (Ianto's sister hadn't deigned to tell him _why_ Ianto was in the hospital) and had arrived panicky and scared and thinking up a million different scenarios with a million different, terrible endings.

Instead, he had found Ianto staring up at the ceiling and murmuring to it softly in Welsh.

"What happened?" he asked Rhiannon, who rolled her eyes.

"Davey hit him with his cricket bat," she said. "He used to be able to do it but he's getting a bit big now. And he said on the way here you can't tell Owen, whoever that is."

Jack snorted and nodded, grinning down fondly at Ianto, who smiled blearily back and began to talk loudly in French.

No, he wouldn't tell Owen. Yet.

* * *

**Thirty-Two**

The thirteenth of May was never a good day. On that day, Jack always made sure to never let Ianto out of his sight. He usually tried to catch the twelfth and fourteenth too, just to be sure, but it wasn't always possible.

Tosh and Gwen always asked why. Being smart, observant women, they had both noticed over the course of their time with Ianto and himself, but Jack never told them. He didn't even know if Ianto realised what Jack was doing.

Owen knew - but then, Owen was the doctor. Owen had to know. Owen was the one who'd stopped it going the way Ianto had wanted, and Ianto had hated him - and Jack - for that for a long time.

The thirteenth of May had been Lisa's birthday. And now, the thirteenth of May was a tiny, Jack-imposed suicide watch of remembrance.

* * *

**Thirty-Three**

The new archivist for Torchwood Three hated his job. Every day, he was ignored, shunted into the shadows, or addressed by the wrong name. The boss never did it, but Gwen did occasionally, and then she adopted an expression that said she wanted to cry and hurried away.

But more than that was the ghost in the very depths of the archives - the oldest part, which gathered dust and nobody looked into any more. The archives where 'amazing' technology had been found in the 1800s, and had since been genuinely invented by humans, independent of the Rift actions.

Down there, a man still moved.

The new archivist could hear, sometimes, late at night, soft singing in Welsh. Sometimes he could hear a man crying, sometimes laughing, sometimes shouting in Welsh at nothing. Things were knocked off walls, archives disturbed and rearranged to the old method that they'd been using before.

And sometimes, he would turn away from his work, and see a pair of cold blue eyes before metal clanged, and the image vanished.

* * *

**Thirty-Four**

Jack doesn't need anyone.

He needs, really, not much of anything, because death isn't really a problem for him these days.

He needs air and food and water and sometimes sleep, just like everyone else, but it's a minor inconvenience if he doesn't get it.

He doesn't _need_.

He doesn't need Gwen, the Doctor, Tosh, Owen, Ianto, Estelle, Grey, John, anybody he's ever known or trusted or loved or wanted or even hated. He doesn't need any of them.

But he wants - oh, how he wants - and that, in a way, is so much worse.

* * *

**Thirty-Five**

In the aftermath of Ianto's betrayal, and the cannibals in the countryside, and Tosh's affair with a psychopathic alien, Jack comes to realise, when looking at the empty shell of pain and self-loathing and hatred that Ianto is becoming - if the process isn't complete already - that he wants what he can no longer have.

If he could ever have it in the first place, it's gone now, and Jack doesn't know what to do to get it back.

* * *

**Thirty-Six**

The thing that scared Jack the most was not feeling fear.

When Tosh told him what she had heard Ianto think, when she wore her precious pendant and looked at the world in a new light, it frightened Jack at the vindictive voice in the back of his head that whispered:

_He deserves it._

And for a long minute, after nodding Tosh out, Jack sat there wondering how cold he had become, how little he connected with the real world any more - and whether he was fit to be their leader if he couldn't understand them in any way.

And worse, when he decided to do something about Tosh's information...he didn't know how to.


	6. 37 to 45

**Notes: if anyone wants any of these snapshots developed into something longer, feel free to ask. I can't promise it'll happen, but I'll give it a go. Also, #30, #33 and #34 look unlikely to happen at the moment, but that's never a completely permanent decision. _Also_, huge thanks to everybody who has been reading and reviewing the extensions: you can't believe how those messages have helped the last month.**

**Thirty-Seven**

Ianto is frightening.

Jack kind of doesn't want to know how a twenty-five year old man can hide bodies, smuggle large pieces of equipment across the country, keep a half-converted woman alive for weeks without any apparent aid, use a variety of handguns with no formal training to his name, be familiar with more weaponry to boot, and make jumps of logic that only those with more knowledge than they're admitting can make.

And his background didn't help. A tailor's son. Come on, that was just ridiculous. Sure, he was probably taught from the age of about four how to stab someone in the eye with a needle, but what else? Was his mother ex-IRA or something like that?

And then to fit the extensive kind of training Ianto had clearly _had_ into a short, nowhere near completed lifespan...

Jack was glad Ianto was a twentieth century boy, because the Time Agency would have _loved_ him.

* * *

**Thirty-Eight**

Jack has a tiny, ever-so-strange obsession with washing Ianto's hair for him.

Basically, it's only when Jack isn't there or Ianto is very, _very _angry with him that Jack doesn't get in the shower with him to wash his hair. Sometimes, if Ianto takes a bath instead, Jack will even sit on the closed toilet and chat to him until it's time to wash his hair.

Ianto can't really remember the last time he washed his own hair.

But Jack gives him little head massages when he does it, which are _amazing_, so Ianto doesn't complain too much.

* * *

**Thirty-Nine**

Jack didn't need to sleep, and he was grateful for it in the early hours of the morning. When Ianto slept over at the Hub with him, Jack usually did end up catching a few hours (and he felt much better afterwards, so he found he _liked _to sleep occasionally) but he still woke up at around four o'clock in the morning.

And in the early hours of the morning, when time moves the slowest, Jack would just lie there, with Ianto's head pillowed on his shoulder in a very uncomfortable position, and brush his fingers lightly through the dark hair.

* * *

**Forty**

Ianto's 'coming out' to his mother hadn't been planned, because it simply hadn't been advisable. And he completely blamed his cousin Sophie for the entire fiasco, because it _was all her fault_ and she owed him many, many drinks. If Mam hadn't been going on about the shame and degradation Sophie and her girlfriend were bringing to the Jones clan, Ianto wouldn't have got cross, and if Ianto hadn't had to get cross, he wouldn't have blurted out that Mam had a gay child too, and Mam wouldn't have stared at him and figured it out because her only _other _child was married with children.

Sophie owed him a _lot _for sticking up for her.

* * *

**Forty-One**

There are secrets Ianto owns that Jack doesn't want to know. He doesn't want to know about the scar on his neck, tucked in just under his jaw, or why Owen's eyes follow that scar like it's a beacon or an alarm. He doesn't want to know why Owen and Ianto suddenly didn't fight anymore, or why Owen suddenly started fulfilling his job as the team doctor when it came to Ianto.

He doesn't want to know, because deep down he thinks he _does_, and he doesn't want his suspicions confirmed.

He doesn't want to believe that Ianto is so breakable.

* * *

**Forty-Two**

Jack has never wanted to hit a woman before - even in his day and age, that part of ancient etiquette remained - but glaring across at the barmaid flirting with Ianto so outrageously that she'll be ripping her top off in a moment has him clenching his fists.

And Tosh notices, and rescues Ianto from the barmaid, but Jack kind of wishes she hadn't kissed Ianto to do it.

* * *

**Forty-Three**

Andrew finds the photograph, digging through the archives for something, and he hands it to Jack curiously at lunchtime.

"Who's the bloke?" he asks, and Jack winces a little.

It's an ancient photograph - on paper they haven't used in a hundred years or more - and yellowed and curling up at the edges, but the two men in it are perfectly recognisable. They're grinning at the camera, and the beach in the background is about five miles further inland now, but Jack remembers the day and the photograph and the occasion, and he sighs heavily.

"He had your job," he tells Andrew, "about a hundred and fifteen years ago."

"Oh," Andrew says quietly, and the room goes a little quiet. They know how Jack hurts, losing all he ever loved.

Jack taps the photo, traces the outlines of that smiling face, and smiles himself.

"He kept me together through a lot," he says. "Even now."

"You loved him?" Vikki asks, and Jack frowns.

"I suppose I did," he says. "He was...different, I know that much."

Nobody wants to ask the question that's important in this job, but Jack answers it anyway.

"It was a quick end."

* * *

**Forty-Four**

Gwen comes into work and finds Ianto's tie around the coffee machine. She picks it up almost gingerly, as if it's going to bite, and looks around curiously for its owner. He's always around by this point. She decides to leave Jack's office until last - she doesn't want to know what they'd be doing in there, thanks - and explores the rest of the Hub gingerly.

She finds Ianto, eventually, buttoning his waistcoat in the autopsy bay.

"Do I want to know?" she asks, leaning over the railing and dropping his tie on his head.

"_Captain Harkness _decided that I had done enough cleaning last night," Ianto says, a little sourly, and Gwen giggles.

"Oh, I see," she says. "In the same manner that Rhys _decided _that the film was over last night?"

"Quite likely," Ianto says. "Why, exactly, this involved scattering my clothes over the entire Hub, I have no idea."

"Because then you have to bend over to retrieve them!" the bellowed response echoes from Jack's office, and Gwen shrieks with laughter at the idea. Because she's married, not dead, and she's noticed Ianto's rather nice arse herself.

Ianto simply pulls the face of the man used to his suffering, and does up his tie.

* * *

**Forty-Five**

Gwen collapses on the sofa and heaves a great sigh. Rhys frowns at her, turns off the television, and drags her in for a hug.

"What happened?" he asks, completely businesslike. Much as he loves _Wife Swap_, he can watch the rerun later.

"Jack," she grumbles, and he stiffens, but she ploughs on, "showing his utter pathetic knowledge of being a normal human being."

"Er...?" Rhys offers.

"Ianto has the flu," Gwen says. "The proper flu, too. And Jack was utterly convinced he was going to die and wanted to take him to hospital and was generally being utterly pathetic. I spent all day with melodrama. Hold me."

The worst part is, having only met Jack briefly, and having not liked him much then anyway, Rhys can _still _imagine that.

He feels sorry for Ianto, and it's got nothing to do with being ill.


	7. 46 to 50

**Notes: if anyone wants any of these snapshots developed into something longer, feel free to ask. I can't promise it'll happen, but I'll give it a go. And Englishpudding, give me an email address or account so I can reply to you, yeah?**

**Forty-Six**

Jack knows he's lucky, and so does everybody else. When he found the piece of paper and the phone number that had been sneaked into Ianto's pocket sometime during their date, he took great delight in taking it out and smoothing it out elaborately as they readied for bed.

"A secret admirer!" he exclaimed. "God, Yan, you're attracting unwanted attention!"

"I wouldn't know about that," Ianto said, and Jack laughed.

"Oooh, having an affair, are you?" he teased, sneaking his hands up under Ianto's shirt and around his back.

"Well, if you would just pay some attention to me, I wouldn't have to go around flirting with waiters, now would I?" Ianto questioned in his most professional manner, and Jack laughed deeply, crushing the younger man close.

"Are you saying I'm neglecting you?" he teased, whispering right into Ianto's ear.

"If you gave me something to look at occasionally, I wouldn't have to look around."

Jack grinned and toppled the pair of them onto the bed, pinning Ianto down effortlessly and biting his shoulder through his shirt in reprimand.

"I can make you forget _all about _waiters and their phone numbers," he promised.

When he rolled his hips into Ianto's, the man's breath hitched and he groaned.

"Oh, I'm sure you can, but you might just have to deliver on that promise now."

* * *

**Forty-Seven**

Jack believes in reincarnation by the time he reaches the age of four hundred and fifty. Because the man who passes his house every morning pushing one of those old-fashioned buggies that Jack can remember being new...that man has lived before. And his name isn't Ianto, and he's got a wife and three kids, and his wife isn't black or called Lisa, and Jack's pretty sure that he isn't an archivist-cum-teaboy for a not-so-secret organisation...

But it's him. In the flesh. It's exactly the same walk, eyes, smile, hair, skin, hands, laugh, mannerisms - everything.

But Jack can't get near him, because then the line between Ianto and James will blur forever, and he can't lose that clarity.

* * *

**Forty-Eight**

When Gwen comes into the conference room with a report she did last night (Rhys is away, and she felt bored and lonely, and couldn't be bothered ringing up Emma for a girls' night out) she stops in the doorway and giggles at the scene before her.

Jack and Ianto are sitting in Jack's chair at the head of the table. Jack is watching a film that Gwen doesn't recognise on the screen, and Ianto is sitting in his lap comfortably. Ianto's completely ignoring the film, though, and is, of all things, knitting.

"Hello," Jack says, grinning back at Gwen as if he's reading her mind, and he pauses the film to beckon her over. Ianto moves as if to get off Jack's lap, but then an arm is around his midriff and he is restrained. "Where are you going?"

"Fine," Ianto mutters, and resettles, turning back to his knitting. It's not even got a shape.

"What's that?" Gwen asks.

"Physiotherapy," Ianto says. "Tore some ligaments a couple of months ago. This helps."

"Fun," she says and Ianto pulls a face.

He ignores them further while Jack and Gwen discuss her report, and argue a little over what to do about her findings, and Gwen is sent on her way to play solitaire on the computers. She turns back in the doorway to watch Jack unpause the film and give Ianto a hug before he resettles.

And Jack can't see it, but Gwen can see the little smile of contentment on Ianto's face that she's never seen before.

* * *

**Forty-Nine**

When Ianto nearly slammed the door behind him and forcibly pulled Jack's chair, with Jack in it, back from his desk, Jack knew something was wrong. He knew something was _badly_ wrong when Ianto dropped down into his lap and buried his face in Jack's shoulder with a deep, frustrated sigh.

"What happened?" Jack asked, wrapping his arms around Ianto's waist.

For a minute, Ianto said nothing, before turning his head to one side and saying, "I'm staying at the Hub for the next two weeks."

"Not that I'm going to complain about that, but why?" Jack asked.

"My ex boyfriend is back in town for a fortnight."

"...Is that a bad thing?"

"It's a very bad thing. I have it on reliable information that he's looking for me to 'patch things up'," Ianto said, and Jack didn't think he'd ever heard Ianto speak of anybody with such loathing before. "Trust me, Jack, if we meet again, there's going to be blood. And I don't know whose."

"Bad break up?" Jack queried.

"Bad break up, bad relationship, bad news. The man is bad news," Ianto growled, and Jack moved him back a little to frown into his face.

"What do you mean by 'bad relationship'?" he asked carefully.

"He thought he could knock me around," Ianto snapped. "Lots of fighting, lots of verbal...then I upped and left him."

"After how long?" Jack demanded, and when Ianto didn't answer, he gave him a little shake. "How long?!"

"Maybe three months. Something like that."

"You put up with it for three months?"

"I don't need reminding of how much of an idiot I was," Ianto snarled. "Just thought you should know that there's no way I'm going out there again until he's gone."

"Fine by me," Jack said, "but you don't mind if I do, do you?"

Ianto just gave him a look that forbade Jack to go within a hundred feet of the ex-boyfriend, and returned his head to Jack's shoulder.

* * *

**Fifty**

The most romantic moment of Ianto's life had also been the least romantic, which kind of screwed his mind over, so he tried not to think about it too much. There had been an alien artifact washed up on the beach in the early hours of the morning, so Jack had turfed him out of bed to go and find this too.

Somehow, Ianto had ended up lying on top of Jack in the cold surf, with wet sand invading his jeans and _very _cold water rushing back and forth over the pair of them and making them splutter. But Jack's arms around his waist had been tight and warm, and Jack had been laughing breathlessly beneath him, and it wasn't a 'movie moment' at all, but it came kind of close.


	8. 51 to 60

**Notes: if anyone wants any of these snapshots developed into something longer, feel free to ask. I can't promise it'll happen, but I'll give it a go. In further news, #37, #40, #42 and #49 don't currently look possible to make into extensions. While the proposed idea for #37 would be interesting, it would also be chaptered, and I haven't the time for another story. Any of you are welcome to take the idea if you want it. #38, #39 and #45 should come, but I seem to be having a touch of writer's block about it.**

**Fifty-One**

When the bombs with the unusual energy signatures had gone off, Jack had been struck with fear.

The sound and the resulting collapse of building had told Jack that there was certainly more than one. And the fact that he suspected he'd briefly died before getting out of the rubble said that it was totally possible that someone else had died.

Maybe even Ianto.

Jack didn't know how close he'd been to a device. And for the next half-hour, his stomach was tight with a sick, nauseating fear.

So when they found him, still and silent, that fear had swelled, but the first touch of Jack's fingers on Ianto's dusty suit jacket had wrung a groan from the younger man, and the fear burst like a popped bubble.

He was injured, but he was alive, and he was going to stay that way, and suddenly quite a lot was so much better with Jack's world.

* * *

**Fifty-Two**

When he kisses him, Jack pulls him in close and tight, his hands wrapping around the back of Ianto's shoulders to keep them as close as possible without breaking off the kiss entirely. And it's not a dominance thing, or even a lust thing - it's a reassurance thing, because here Jack can feel the rapid beat of Ianto's heart, and right now, that's the most important thing in the world.

* * *

**Fifty-Three**

It happened maybe two weeks ago. One of Ianto's old university friends had come up from Portsmouth for a visit to his family, and had arranged to meet up with Ianto too. Jack had only met Gary by coincidence - he had gone into the pub for a quick drink after an exhausting Weevil chase, and had spotted Ianto. Ianto had waved him over, and introduced them, and had kept Jack there with them, chatting amicably.

And it had been a pleasant evening, but for the end of it.

When they'd left the pub, Ianto had held the door, and for a moment his sleeve rode up a little to expose a bruise circling his wrist. It was Jack's bruise - one taken from a passionate game of naked hide and seek that had climaxed (no pun intended) with him catching Ianto and pinning him up against the wall of the shower room.

"What's that?" Gary asked, frowning at it.

"Eh? Oh," Ianto said, peering at the bruise, then he smirked. "Jack got a little passionate, that's all."

Gary's eyes had narrowed, and he nodded sharply, before saying, "Walk me to my car, Ianto," in a demanding tone and stalking off.

"See you back at the Hub?" Jack asked as Ianto took off after him, and received an affirmative noise in response.

But when Ianto _did _join him in the Hub, he was in a starchy mood - one that spoke of irritation more than anything else.

"What happened?" Jack asked. "I only left you for ten minutes."

"Gary jumping to stupid conclusions," Ianto said.

"Oh?" Jack asked, taking the offered cup of coffee gratefully.

"Mm," Ianto said. "Seemed to think that bruise meant you were knocking me around. Stupid arse. He's always been like that, thinks the worst of everybody, worse than _Owen_, for God's sake..."

But the comment had stuck in Jack's mind, and ate away at his psyche until he was suddenly finding himself re-examining their relationship and wondering, wondering...it was stupid, but _was it true_, and Jack didn't _know..._

What if Gary had been _right_?

* * *

**Fifty-Four**

Jack had often found, in his long life, that you could care for someone for a long time before _realising _that you cared for them. It was often a shock to get those realisations and to see what had always been running beneath your thoughts before, and you never even noticed.

He'd known before, somewhere inside, that Ianto was different. That he didn't react to Ianto the same way he did to any of the others. But he had always brushed it aside - it was just sexual attraction, that was all.

Until they heard that horrendous chorus coming through the speakers, the gutwrenching, fear-inducing, grinding sound of the word 'exterminate' in those gravelled voices, and his first thought was not for himself, or the Doctor, or Gwen, but for Ianto.

He had reached out on impulse, needed to touch him one last time, and in that second he realised that he was about to lose the one thing he needed.

So when the world had been saved, he didn't take any detours on the way back to the Hub, he didn't try to get the Doctor to let him stay just one more time...

He needed to get back to Ianto.

* * *

**Fifty-Five**

Ianto opened the door and was promptly presented with a large bouquet of carnations under his nose.

"What on earth, Jack?" he blinked, taking the flowers before he lost an eye, and staring at the Captain.

"Fancied bringing you a present," Jack said, looking very pleased with himself.

"What have you done?" Ianto asked suspiciously.

"Aw, I can't even bring you a present without you thinking I've done something bad?"

"No."

"Why?" Jack asked, following Ianto through the flat to the kitchen where he started digging for a vase.

"Because you only bring me presents when you've done something bad," Ianto said.

"Maybe I realised the error of my ways and that I should appreciate you more," Jack suggested.

"Now you're scaring me," Ianto said, taking surprisingly little care of arranging the flowers for a man usually so pedantic. "What did you _do_?"

"_Nothing_," Jack insisted, so Ianto changed tack.

"Fine, what do you _want_?"

Jack groaned and said, "Got me."

"I know," Ianto said unwaveringly. "What do you want?"

"Company," Jack said. "Rift's being boring and it's lonely at the Hub. Can I come and watch a movie with you?"

"Film," Ianto corrected, then sighed as if it was a huge burden on his social life. "I suppose so. But I'm not ordering any of those weird pizzas you like."

"Deal."

* * *

**Fifty-Six**

Jack didn't lie to Gwen: he doesn't need to sleep. He doesn't even particularly like sleeping - it removes the little time he's going to have, relatively speaking, with the people he cares about. But Jack _does _sleep: it's too much effort, when he's sated and warm and wrapped up in and around Ianto, who is deeply asleep and peacefully so, to stay awake.

* * *

**Fifty-Seven**

He finds Ianto down on the beach, bare feet buried in cold sand, and the wind whipping at his shirt and trousers. The suit jacket and tie have been abandoned, to who-knows-where, and Ianto looks strangely manic like that.

"Thinking of walking into the sea?" Jack asks casually, and Ianto makes a tiny, unidentifiable noise.

"Can't swim well enough," he says, and Jack moves closer to slid an arm around him.

"You okay?" Jack asks.

"Just needed a bit of thinking time," Ianto says, and silence reigns once more.

But he leans into Jack a little, and doesn't tell him to leave, so Jack must be doing something right.

* * *

**Fifty-Eight**

Jack knew he was in trouble. He should never have kissed her: Ianto was quite clearly furious, and hadn't come near him all day. And the longer Ianto steered clear, the more Jack worried at exactly how much trouble he was in.

So he was quite unprepared for Ianto to storm in, seize him by the braces, haul him up out of the chair and kiss him so hard and so fiercely that Jack thought his breath was being stolen away from him. And when they broke apart, just as violently as they'd kissed, Ianto promptly dropped him and turned back for the door.

"Maybe now," he spat, just before storming out again, "you'll remember who it is you're supposed to be kissing around here, and if you want any more, you'll keep yourself out of those situations!"

* * *

**Fifty-Nine**

It had been a very, very good evening.

The Rift had been dead for days, so Jack had followed Ianto home and around his flat like they had an ordinary nine-to-five job. Jobs. Whatever. They'd had a properly-cooked, stay-at-home meal, and curled up in front of the television. When Jack's favourite space programme came on, an uninterested Ianto had taken his shower, and returned, damp and fresh, in his blue dressing-gown to curl up for a film. Jack had been suckered into giving him a foot massage, which had turned into something more, which had resulted in the film being switched off and their movement to the bedroom.

So when the Rift alarm on Jack's wrist-strap went off at around three in the morning, he didn't complain as he untangled himself from Ianto's sleeping form and slipped out of the flat like a ghost.

If the Rift felt like going off at three in the morning every morning, he'd take it, in exchange for more evenings like that.

* * *

**Sixty**

When the Weevil hit the SUV, control was wrenched from Jack's hands and the scream of tyres was almost deafening. But with the bang that reverberated through the vehicle when it flew into oncoming traffic and embraced the front of that lorry...that was worse.

The silence that crept through for a brief second was horrific, but then Gwen, apparently unhurt in the back seat, screamed the name that, for the first time, Jack desperately didn't want to hear.


	9. 61 to 68

**Notes: if anyone wants any of these snapshots developed into something longer, feel free to ask. I can't promise it'll happen, but I'll give it a go. In further news, #52, #56 and #54 will not be continued at this time. Honestly, I think #54's been done in 'Together We Stand'. Two different versions of #60 may appear soon; #58 is still going ahead.**

**Sixty-One**

It didn't take them long to figure out what the newest present from the Rift was, mostly because they already had a complete record of the language the instructions were written in. They were carved into the lid of the box, which didn't open, and didn't seem designed to open.

"So?" Gwen asked, poking it gingerly, and Jack knocked her hand away.

"Don't touch it if you can help it," he said.

"The translator says it's a suicide device," Tosh clarified, and Gwen's eyes went wide as she stepped back hastily. "Sucks out the life force in an instant for a rapid, painless, and irreversible death. It's not designed for humans, but Torchwood Two found something similar a few years back and lost two team members. They just touched it."

"Got a tray, Ianto?" Jack called jovially.

The look that Ianto gave the machine, however, was frightening, and sent a shiver down Jack's spine, before the younger man nodded curtly and retreated to the kitchen.

"I'll take it down to the archives," Jack said quietly to Tosh. "Won't matter if I slip up, huh?"

* * *

**Sixty-Two**

Ianto was on the phone when Jack crept into the flat. He shed his boots and coat, gave a cursory pat to Ianto's ginger cat, and crept up to slip his arms around Ianto's waist and under the untucked shirt. Even as his fingers played across the slim planes of Ianto's stomach, the man's voice didn't falter for a second, though Jack knew that he was getting a _very _nasty look.

* * *

**Sixty-Three**

By the time morning broke, Jack was exhausted and felt like a complete heel. He'd been awake most of the night, soothing away nightmares that _he_ had caused. He hadn't _meant _to say it; it had been an accusation made in the heat of anger. The row had been nasty, and it had gotten very personal very fast, but he hadn't meant to say _that_. And when Ianto had just frozen up and stared at him in a mix of horror and terrible pain, Jack would happily have shot himself - several times over, in non-lethal places - to take it back.

* * *

**Sixty-Four**

Jack liked exploring, especially exploring bodies. Particularly Ianto's. Somewhere in the bit where their relationship had migrated from a series of one-night stands to the nights off being the unusual bits, he had taken the time to thoroughly explore every inch of Ianto's body. And although usually Ianto didn't mind, he wasn't too keen on Jack sitting on the end of the sofa, like tonight, and examining Ianto's feet clinically while Ianto tried to read.

And Ianto was sorry, but there was just no possible way to remove a sock erotically. No matter how hard Jack seemed to be trying.

* * *

**Sixty-Five**

Jack hit the ground running, skidding along the last few feet on his knees and probably ripping his trousers, but he didn't care. Owen was already doing CPR, he and Gwen both soaked to the bone, and the pools of water around the four of them were frigid. The squeal of tyres on the road above heralded Tosh's arrival with the SUV, and then her boots were sprinting down the boards towards them and she halted abruptly just beside Jack, but still standing.

"Oh my God," she hissed through her teeth, her hands clenching in the material over Jack's shoulder. "What happened?!"

"It knocked him out and knocked him in," Gwen was white-faced and shivering. "He was under for ages, and he's not...he's not..."

"He _will_!" Jack roared, and, as if by some divine command, the still chest under Owen's palms jerked and spasmed, and time started moving again.

* * *

**Sixty-Six**

The one and only time that Jack actually read beyond the cover page of Ianto's file (which, like all the employee files, were disgustingly hard and made of actual paper, and not in the system electronically. It was revolting, in this day and age) he wished he never had, and promptly filed it back. He never told Ianto that he'd looked, but he suspected that Ianto knew anyway. He was so remarkably indulgent of all the attention he was suddenly receiving, and so unquestioning about it, that Jack was _sure _that he'd been found out.

But it didn't stop him, because, in Jack's mind, he couldn't afford to let it go by untreated.

* * *

**Sixty-Seven**

If they fought at work, it always ended the same way. And they fought frequently - Jack's attitude to the job, and Ianto's paranoia of being nothing more than an easy lay, often brought them to verbal blows - but it always ended up like this. Jack would come creeping over to Ianto's flat in the evening, and find the doorway blocked - if answered at all - by a tall, icy Welshman who was, initially, little inclined to grant Jack access to anything at all, right at that moment.

But Jack would wheedle and apologise and admit that he was an arse who didn't deserve forgiveness, and sometimes would even admit that he just possibly might be in love and need some forgiveness or he'd drop dead on the doorstep, there and then, and eventually the door would open properly and he'd get a sarky response worthy of Owen himself, and the temperature would gradually inch back to normal levels.

And if it went higher, then, well, Jack wasn't going to complain.

* * *

**Sixty-Eight**

It was quite possibly one of the worst days of Jack's life. Even though the moment itself had been short, the fear that it had created - of his relationship with Ianto being permanently over - lingered for a long while, and still rose in his chest whenever he remembered the reddening mark on Ianto's cheek, and the stinging of his knuckles where he'd struck him.

And worse, worst of all, the _look_ in Ianto's eyes.

Fear.


	10. 69 to 78

**Notes: if anyone wants any of these snapshots developed into something longer, feel free to ask. I can't promise it'll happen, but I'll give it a go. So far, all the latest requests should be going ahead. Kudos to captainme for inspiring #71. And I can say now that #74 will not be extended.**

**Sixty-Nine**

Jack helped Ianto move into his new flat. The old one Jack had deemed unfit to live in, and he had prodded and poked and pestered (and locked Ianto in the Hub for two days) until Ianto finally caved and agreed to find somewhere else.

But then 'helped' was being generous: Jack had helped him get all the boxes from the old place to the new place without the use of expensive moving companies (mostly aided by the fact that Ianto didn't actually own most of his furniture), but there 'helped' became a redundant verb.

Mostly because Jack had taken one look at Ianto, sweaty and shirtless and in those nice, worn, bum-hugging jeans, and had tackled him onto the sofa.

"We need to christen the place," Jack had said, beaming.

"Bloody _insatiable_, Harkness!" Ianto protested, and he put up a struggle for the entire principle of the fact that 'christening the new place' happened once the moving-in process was _over_, not in the middle of it. Or the beginning of it.

But he didn't fight too hard. And he didn't scream.

Much.

* * *

**Seventy**

Jack had invited himself over with the excuse of needing to check that Ianto was 'all in one piece' after their latest visitor-from-another-world had nearly taken his head off.

He had gotten a reluctant Ianto out of his clothes with the desire to make _sure _that Ianto was 'all in one piece' and not squirming out of things because he didn't want Owen to poke him with medical sorts of things.

And now he had Ianto flat on his back on the bed, gasping and swearing at him, just to make_ absolutely sure _that he wasn't missing _anything_.

Because you had to check these things very carefully, after all.

* * *

**Seventy-One**

"I officially love you," Jack said, when Ianto joined him on the Hub sofa with two cups of the sweetest hot chocolate that the Earth had ever produced.

"Doesn't 'officially' imply that somewhere along the line, you married me?" Ianto quipped.

Jack's eyebrows shot up into his hairline, before he said: "Well, I love you enough to do it."

"Don't," Ianto advised. "You'd have my mother as a mother-in-law."

"Is that a bad thing?"

"It's bad enough having her for a real mother," Ianto said, rolling his eyes. "Anyway, it's kind of hard to marry a man who died in 1941."

"True," Jack allowed.

There was a short silence, in which they shuffled into a more comfortable position (which ended with Ianto's head on Jack's shoulder in that idle way he seemed to like), before Ianto broke the calm with his quiet voice.

"I love you enough too, though."

Jack squeezed his hand, and said nothing.

* * *

**Seventy-Two**

"Owen's coming," Jack said, turning his attention from his earpiece to Ianto. He had his coat wrapped around both of them, and it was bloody cold, but he was really rather more worried about Ianto's head wound and blatant concussion.

"'Bout time," Ianto mumbled.

"Yep," Jack said. "Oi. Sit up a bit, come on. Never thought I'd say this, but you can't go to sleep on me."

"Why? Y're warm and comfortable and..." Ianto finished the sentence in Welsh - but Jack wasn't sure if he was doing it to annoy him, or if the concussion was worse than he thought.

"Because then you'll die," Jack said, trying to keep the tone light. "And if you die, Suzie's waiting for us, and Suzie bet Owen _ages _ago that we'd last for five whole years, you and me. And if you die, she'll lose the bet, and she'll kick your dead ass."

Ianto seemed to think about that for a moment before he said, "That's a pretty good reason."

"Yep," Jack said. "And Owen's coming."

"Owen's coming," Ianto echoed.

Then they heard the approaching engine, and Jack wasn't so worried any more.

* * *

**Seventy-Three**

Martha rapped on the locked door of the Tourist Information Office and huffed crossly. She knew it never closed, because she knew Jack lived in the bloody Hub, and surely she'd have a video camera up here? Men, honestly, couldn't do bloody anything right.

She rapped again, louder, and this time got footsteps.

She squeaked in surprise when Jack wrenched the door back perhaps two inches and glowered out at her. He was quite obviously naked, quite obviously annoyed, and had quite obviously had somebody's hands messing up his hair very recently.

"Go to a cafe," he told Martha crossly, "and have a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich. With lots of brown sauce. And then come back, and we'll be open."

"Why can't I come in now?" Martha demanded.

"We're _dabbling_," Jack said pelutantly, and slammed the door in her face.

* * *

**Seventy-Four**

"Jack," Tosh said when he descended from his office that morning, "next time, can you turn off the CCTV when we all leave?"

"Why?" Jack asked.

"Because Owen just tried to sell the recording of you and Ianto in the shower room to several...websites," Tosh said, and flushed. "And I think he got a few bids, by the look on his face."

"_Owen_!" Jack bellowed, heading for the autopsy bay at a run.

But it was Ianto who noticed Tosh saving the video file to her personal files.

* * *

**Seventy-Five**

Jack didn't often like this position very much, but tonight he lay with his head pressed into Ianto's chest and listening. Where he was, he could hear Ianto's breathing more clearly than his heartbeat, but it was reassuring anyway, because it went a little bit of a way towards erasing the image of that gun pressed to Ianto's shirt, and the deranged look in his attacker's eyes that told Jack that it would have been so, so easy.

* * *

**Seventy-Six**

Ianto often thought of Jack, rather fondly, as being like a kid in some ways.

Like that morning: he had come back from one of his rooftop jaunts to find Ianto sprawled out on the sofa, reading a book and ignoring Myfanwy's plaintive demands to be fed. It was Ianto's little piece of private time, and Jack usually interrupted it with innuendo.

That morning, though, he had knelt by the sofa and peered his head over the top of armrest, looking down on Ianto's as though peering over the edge of a precipice.

"You look funny upside-down," he observed, then kissed the tip of Ianto's nose and wandered away again.

Ianto had stared after him in bemusement for a moment, before returning to his book and electing to ignore it.

* * *

**Seventy-Seven**

Ianto looked so much younger, so much more vulnerable, in his hoodies and jeans, Jack decided. He was dozing in the front passenger seat of the SUV, suffering from a rather spectacular case of crash and burn, and had already napped on the sofa after Gwen tore him a new one about overdoing it.

Jack had deemed him unfit to drive and was running him home. And with Ianto looking so much in need of someone to look after him right then, it would take one hell of a Rift alarm to get Jack back out of the flat once he was in it.

* * *

**Seventy-Eight**

Jack was practically bouncing in the airport lounge, one foot jiggling impatiently and his fingers flicking and fidgeting at the keys in his pocket. Ianto had been gone for a whole two weeks, and Jack was burning to see him again, and it was cracking Owen up something rotten. He'd actually banished Jack until Ianto was back and, quote, 'you get it out your sodding system!'

Ianto's sister had gotten married. Which Jack hadn't been bothered about until Ianto said that she and her fiance and the fiance's family "which is much bigger than ours" lived in Australia. And Ianto hadn't had a holiday in three years and had made one of it.

Which Jack was fine with. Until he'd woken up on the third day and realised that he missed Ianto terribly.

So now, waiting in the airport for Ianto to appear through those big doors, Jack was just wondering if he had the self-control to make it home, or whether the tinted windows of the SUV would have to make do.


	11. 79 to 100

**Notes: if anyone wants any of these snapshots developed into something longer, feel free to ask. I can't promise it'll happen, but I'll give it a go. At the moment, #17, #69, #77, #76, #6, #9 and #18 will not be continued. #60, #68, #72 and #73 are still possibilities.**

**Seventy-Nine**

Jack stopped his path over Ianto's shoulder, and stared down at the small scar in the crook of Ianto's elbow for a moment.

"What?" Ianto asked, sounding somewhat irritable that he had stopped.

"What's that?" Jack asked.

"Huh?"

"That," and he poked it.

"Oh. Cigarette burn."

"You were attacked?"

"No. Was my cigarette. What've you stopped for?"

But Jack didn't continue, frowning at the mark until something clicked and he stared at Ianto instead, looking slightly nauseous.

"You did it to yourself."

Ianto didn't deny it.

* * *

**Eighty**

Love, Ianto decided, was putting up with Jack on a daily basis. He didn't need to self-analyse himself to realise that having gone this long without killing Jack meant that he quite clearly loved him to the ends of the earth. World. Universe. Because Jack could sometimes be a real pain in the arse, and it was probably love that had stopped Ianto loading his gun and shooting him through the eye. Even though it might be a little bit satisfying, just the once.

* * *

**Eighty-One**

It was almost five years after the incident with the cannibals that Jack got Ianto to leave the confines of the city again. Almost five long years of knowing, but having no proof, that Ianto had been frightened off the rolling Welsh countryside, perhaps forever, and five long years of blaming himself.

But when he finally got Ianto back out there, he was surprised by the calm. And when he found the reason for that calm, he was saddened.

Perhaps fear would have been better.

* * *

**Eighty-Two**

In 2513, a theory was put to quantam physicists that Time only contain a finite number of templates for man. That, because the lifespan of man was so long and the species so diverse, there could not be infinite genetic results from the less than one percent of the DNA that made each person individual.

In essence, the theory proposed reincarnation - but a form that was exact. Almost, in fact, resurrection.

The theory was put down, dismissed, and laughed off the scientific stage. But he persisted - pushed it and pushed it, until even he had to admit that getting people to accept this was hopeless.

But he never gave up, because he _knew _that it was same man who had lived before. He _knew _that somehow, some way, the dead had returned.

And nobody else seemed to notice, because they had all been dead once before too.

* * *

**Eighty-Three**

Before they had gone their separate ways, Jack had asked Rose about Ianto. He had asked if she knew him - though the chance was small - and he had honestly expected a no. Instead, her face morphed a little and she laughed bitterly and shook her head.

"We lost him," she said. "He was one of us. We lost him."

"Why?" Jack asked.

"You don't want to know that," she said, and wouldn't tell him any more.

* * *

**Eighty-Four**

Jack knew he'd messed up, running off with the Doctor like that, and he was prepared for the long haul of making it up to Ianto when he got back. Because Ianto would have a right to be angry - hell, Jack would be furious in his position - and Ianto had no problems expressing his anger whatsoever.

But somehow, upon Jack's return, the fact that the wary coolness was gone within a few days...that hurt worse. And Jack didn't know why.

* * *

**Eighty-Five**

Jack found the photo tucked into a book, being used as a bookmark, while Ianto was in the shower. He often pottered around Ianto's flat, poking his way into every nook and cranny - admittedly, mostly because Ianto's shower was too small for two. But he usually didn't find much. This was either new, or had been hidden somewhere else before.

The photo was so old it was crinkling around the edges, curling up and losing its colour. It wasn't much to look at - some blurry snapshot of a young, dark-haired woman with a kid on her hip. The kid wasn't very old - maybe three - and staring at the photographer with chubby fingers stuffed into an anxious, frowning mouth.

Scrawled on the back, in messy writing, were the words 'Anne and Ianto, September 1986'.

Jack turned it over again and stared at the image of Ianto. Three years old, then. Only just, but three. But that look on his face was so sombre - too serious for a three-year-old on a summer's day with...someone who was probably his mother. She _looked _like his mother - she was strikingly similar to Ianto as he was at the moment. Serious eyebrows, sharp blue eyes, ruffled dark hair, tall but somehow stocky at the same time.

She _had _to be his mother.

So why was the photo just stuffed here, out of the way, out of sight and out of mind?

Jack shivered, put it back, and reconsidered squeezing into Ianto's shower with him.

* * *

**Eighty-Six**

"You're what keeps me alive," Ianto had told him once.

Jack never found out whether that was true, or whether it was a clever ploy to keep him from running off like he had with all his previous lovers, once they started to age and die without him. He knew Ianto knew about them - he was too intelligent not to have known - but either way, it had worked.

He didn't want to risk it being true, after all.

* * *

**Eighty-Seven**

At this point in time, Jack knows three things that are absolutely true.

The first is that Ianto is dying.

The second is that Jack doesn't know how to stop him.

And the third is that nobody else seems to care.

They had learned their lesson from Suzie and Ianto in turn, of not to let a team member go by ignored. Of the dangers that could result from brilliant minds like Suzie's and Ianto's being left to their own devices.

And yet, when he had returned from his suspension, they had fallen back into the same old pattern.

And Ianto had returned to the shadows, seemingly used to their darkness.

Jack wondered, sometimes - and a little cruelly - what else Ianto hid in the shadows.

And now, some weeks after Ianto's return, Jack can see him dying. He can see him slowly disappearing beneath those suits that used to fit so well; he can smell the lingering death of cigarette smoke on his clothing when he delivers coffee; he can watch the bones of his face slowly shift forward; he can watch the blood being leeched away by something else and leaving him white and spectral.

And Jack watches him dying, and doesn't know what to do.

Or even if he wants to.

* * *

**Eighty-Eight**

"Ianto's changed you," Gwen commented suddenly, in the middle of a discussion on what to do about an alien in their vaults. They hadn't even threatened each other yet.

"What?" Jack said.

"Ianto. He's changed you."

"Oh. Is that good?"

"Very good," Gwen said. "It's like you've remembered how to be...human."

Jack snorted, but his eyes strayed sideways until he was gazing down out of the office into the main section of the Hub. They couldn't really see Ianto - just his legs sticking out from under Gwen's desk, where he was fixing loose wires in her work terminal. It didn't seem to stop Jack watching, though.

"Guess I'd forgotten what it was like," Jack said.

"What what was like?"

"Loving someone who loves you back. Doesn't idolise you or worship you or whatever. Just loves you," Jack shrugged. "I get a lot of lust, but not all that much love."

"How do you know he loves you?" Gwen asked.

Jack laughed and said, "It's obvious."

* * *

**Eighty-Nine**

Jack knew what it was, but wasn't fast enough to warn them. It rolled to a stop in front of Owen, hovering before his wary face, and Jack opened his mouth to scream from them to get away from it just as Ianto's fingers closed around the silver ball.

And in a flash of lightning, Jack's world was torn away from him.

* * *

**Ninety**

He really should have thought about it, but it had simply never occurred to him. For some reason, the Rift didn't tend to grace (or curse) them with aliens that operated on a psychic level, and he had never supposed it would happen.

Furthermore, he had forgotten about Torchwood One's psychic training.

The...whatever (even Jack didn't know what they were called, though they were undoubtedly in the files from London somewhere) had completely ignored the rest of the clearly untrained team and zoomed in on Ianto.

And the mental contact could have killed him.

In fact, now, in the autopsy bay, listening to Owen's swearing as he thumbed through page after page of notes from various machines, Jack was horrified to realise that it still could.

* * *

**Ninety-One**

The letter had been the result of what Jack assumed was a disastrous experiment, and he had forbidden the team from trying to find a way to respond.

"You should _never_ connect parallel universes," he said firmly.

Upon reading the letter, he found ways to object on personal terms as well, and for the first time, Jack did not merely dislike himself, but truly _loathed _himself. As he had cast the letter aside in disgust, Ianto picked it up again when he came in with the coffe tray, putting it back on the desk as if it had innocently fallen off.

"Throw it away," Jack said.

"You mean file it."

"No. Throw it away."

Ianto blinked at him and said: "Why?"

"I don't want any contact with that man."

Slowly, Ianto unfolded the letter. Jack waited for the response, for the shock and horror and even fear, but got nothing. Ianto simply folded it up again and dropped it in the bin on his way out.

And Jack feared what that meant.

* * *

**Ninety-Two**

The gunshot stopped echoing when Jack's eyes flew open and he found himself staring at the ceiling of his sleep space. He was sweat-soaked and shivering, his hands still grasping desperately, and he let them drop to the bed.

He was alone.

Hurriedly, he tumbled out of the bed and tore on a shirt and trousers, almost running up the ladder on shaky legs and staggering through the office and down the steps like a drunken man. He ignored Gwen's slightly shocked greeting, and headed straight for Ianto, getting his arms around him tightly. He didn't care if Ianto yelled at him for crumpling his suit, or got embarrassed about being affectionate 'at work', or didn't particularly want a hug right now. _Jack _needed the hug, and for once, he really didn't care if Ianto didn't.

But Ianto wasn't a stupid man, and relaxed into the embrace quickly enough, bringing up his hands to smooth over Jack's shoulders and begin that soft crooning noise in the back of his throat that embarrassed Jack, but always calmed him down anyway.

But it was the warmth that chased the shivers away.

* * *

**Ninety-Three**

By the time Jack got there, Ianto had already stripped off his suit jacket, shoes and socks.

"You're not going over that!" Jack yelled over the wind, and Ianto rolled his eyes.

"Of course I am," he said.

"Ianto, I would survive the fall, but you..."

"Won't fall," Ianto replied. "Out of the three of us, Jack, I'm the one most likely to get to the box."

'The box' was in the middle of the plank walkway. It was an innocent enough box, because it didn't have its remote control, but it was also human technology from the future that had originated from, as usual, military technology. They couldn't leave it, but...they couldn't get it.

"We'll think of some other way," Jack argued. "Ianto! You're not walking on that!"

The plank was a foot wide, and wobbly, and there was a high wind. Even John's grace wouldn't have got him across there, and Jack desperately didn't want Ianto to run the risk.

"Yes I am," Ianto said, stepping up to the ledge and flexing his bare feet.

"Ianto!" Jack lunged for him, but stopped dead as one pale foot pressed down delicately on the boards. "Ianto, don't you dare!"

"Love you," Ianto said, almost casually, and stepped off the edge of the world.

* * *

**Ninety-Four**

"What's that?" Jack asked, coming into the Tourist Office from his usual morning rooftop walks, and seeing the letter in Ianto's hand.

"It's from Torchwood One. They've finished rebuilding," Ianto said.

"Oh," Jack said, and he knew before Ianto said it what the letter was about.

"They want me back."

"Are you going?" Jack asked, throat dry.

"I don't have a choice," Ianto said. "I never transferred."

"What?" Jack blinked.

"The employment files are under one system. We're all employed by Torchwood, like the branches of a company. But I never transferred here. I just...I never thought about changing the file. Thought that...after what happened, they wouldn't bring it back."

"But you'll come back, right?" Jack said.

Ianto didn't say anything for a moment, before he crumpled up the letter and gave Jack a wan smile.

"If I can."

* * *

**Ninety-Five**

"You know," Jack commented one evening, "I think you and Tosh are the only ones on the team who hasn't snogged everybody else on the team."

"You're right with Tosh," Ianto shrugged, from where he was trying to put the files on Jack's desk in some semblence of order.

"...You've only snogged me," Jack said, sounding a bit wounded.

"Oh, you mean just at Torchwood Three?"

"You snogged people at Torchwood One?" Jack asked, perking up and looking lecherously interested.

"Yes. Lisa, of course. And before her, Hannah from Public Relations. But that was more like Owen and Gwen, really."

"Based more on her nice legs than her personality?"

"Nice breasts," Ianto corrected.

"But it's just me here," Jack probed.

"No."

"_No_?!" Jack exclaimed. "Well, who else?"

"Suzie."

"_Suzie_?!"

Ianto chuckled and said: "Nobody noticed either of us. We were lonely. She...I trusted her, I suppose."

"She was a murderer."

Ianto gave him a cold look then, said: "So am I, Jack," and turned to go.

* * *

**Ninety-Six**

Sometimes, Ianto's thoughts strayed to territory that was familiar in a dangerous way.

Sometimes, Ianto's mind hovered around the bleak nature of his existence now, and wondered if it wouldn't be better elsewhere.

Sometimes, Ianto thought about guns and bullets, of morgue drawers and blissful eternities of nothing.

And sometimes, Ianto realised that these would never go away.

In those times, Ianto would slip out of the bed and leave Jack dreaming of hopefully more pleasant things. He would creep into the living room - or go home to sit in the living room, if they'd been at the Hub - and sit there, turning his Torchwood-issue handgun over and over in his hands, wondering.

Sometimes, he would hold the gun up to his head, and imagine what it would be like to pull the trigger.

* * *

**Ninety-Seven**

Jack came back to life with a snap that he was rapidly becoming used to. As he opened his eyes, gasping for breath, he found Gwen and Owen leaning over him. Owen was covered in blood, but he looked alright, sitting back on his heels as Jack sat up shakily.

"Where's Tosh?" he asked.

"Getting the SUV," Gwen said. She looked red-eyed and sounded funny.

"Where's Ianto?" came the next question.

Silence.

"Where's Ianto?" Jack breathed.

Slowly, Owen looked off to the left, and Jack followed his gaze to the blanket-covered shape on the tarmac.

Even as he moaned out a denial, he began to silently curse Rose Tyler and her too-large heart.

* * *

**Ninety-Eight**

Jack woke up screaming. In a moment, warm arms were around him and a body feverish from the heat of the shared bed was pressed up against his side, soothing in its very presence. He gulped down a ragged breath and returned the embrace gingerly, strong ribs flexing a little under his fingers as he clutched.

"M'real," a voice thick with an accent Jack still didn't completely understand murmured. "M'here."

He was asleep again before Jack had even edged out a response, but it didn't matter. His presence was enough.

* * *

**Ninety-Nine**

"When was the last time that you ever loved someone?"

That question has been asked of Jack so many times, in so many different forms, that it felt strange to be able to give an answer other than silence. But he gave them silence anyway, because it wasn't their business.

All that was important was that _Ianto_ never asked that question - because then Jack would have failed.

* * *

**One Hundred**

The adrenaline was washing through their veins and making their heartbeats sound obscenely loud in the car. Their breathing was harsh and ragged, but tinged with delirious laughter as they faced the fact that, once again, they had survived. And if they didn't answer the calls for information from their teammate over the comm for a while, too busy letting the air know that they had made it again, too busy seeking out familiar territory on a foreign high, then they would not feel the guilt for it.


	12. 101 to 108

**Notes: I've just moved house, and this update is a peace offering. I won't actually be able to do much for a while, but you've all been so nice about the incredible delays that I'm offering a present. However, in the move, I've lost my records book: I no longer know who wants what extended. Can everybody who requested something that wasn't posted please let me know? Otherwise it won't happen unless someone else asks. So if there's anything special you want extended, tell me in your reviews or messages, please. And, as always, tell me any of the new ones you want extended too.**

* * *

**One Hundred and One**

"I think it's sad," Gwen said. "Jack can't love Ianto because it'll break his heart when he dies, but Ianto..."

She was going to say 'loves Jack' and follow it up with those exaggerated terms that romantic women like Gwen enjoy, but Tosh, to her surprise, interrupted.

"...Can't love Jack."

"What?" Gwen blinked.

"Ianto can't love Jack either," Tosh said. "In fact, I think Jack loves Ianto, but Ianto doesn't love Jack."

Gwen mused, then frowned: "But that's the wrong way around."

"Jack knows Ianto, but Ianto doesn't know Jack. Nobody knows Jack. You can't really love what you don't know; you just love what you _think _you know."

"Do we really know anybody?" Gwen asked.

"More than we do of Jack," Tosh said. It was why she preferred computers: they kept no secrets.

* * *

**One Hundred and Two**

Immortality is a faulty conception, and in the end, Jack did as all humans do. In the end, Jack died. In the end, he found himself on a grey stone road in the middle of the darkness, looking for familiarity in the ghostly faces on the sidelines, and finding none.

He was unsurprised. He hadn't known other people for a hundred years or more, and who would wait so long for the immortal to die?

And then a shadowed form stepped from the white, shapeless crowd lining the roadsides, and smiled.

And it was a familiar smile.

"So what do they call you now, sir?"

"Many things," Jack murmured, "but Jack was always my favourite."

He barely recalled the name Jack, barely recalled that face that smiled at him, but the slow burn in his mind was something he never forgot, and experienced more times than he cared to know. A burn that was lost, and that he missed, and he smiled back at the man in the grey suit.

"So I can still call you Jack?" he asked, pleasantly and effortlessly polite.

"Yes."

The man offers a hand to be shaken, a gesture that Jack _has _forgotten, and the smile widens.

"Welcome to the place you thought wasn't there, Jack," he said smoothly.

"What do they call you now?" Jack echoed, and the smile turned into a gentle laugh, and Jack recalled that laughter itself had an accent, long ago.

"These days?" the man mused. "I suppose I go by Yan, these days."

Jack gripped the hand that memory was beginning to reshape, and his smile became a touch more genuine.

"Yan," he echoed, and the white ghosts began to recede.

* * *

**One Hundred and Three**

Gwen is hovering outside the door to the main room of the Archives, and she shushes Jack hastily as he approaches.

"Look," she breathes, and they edge around the corner like naughty children.

And then Jack hears it.

Ianto is singing, a soft murmur almost under his breath, and definitely in Welsh. It rolls off his tongue like water, spilling into the room and splashing on the walls. He ignores them – or isn't aware of them – and Jack finds himself holding his breath.

And the melancholy in the voice strikes a chord inside Jack, and before too long he has to turn away. He can't memorise Ianto sounding so mournful, even if he doesn't understand the words.

* * *

**One Hundred and Four**

Torchwood One always did collect insane amounts of information about their employees, and Ianto is no exception to the rule. But what strikes Jack in the 'family and friends' section of the file is not the absence of Lisa's name next to 'partner' – after all, they met at Torchwood One, and Jack doesn't know if their superiors had ever picked up on it – but the list of names under 'former partners'.

Names Jack doesn't know, names Ianto had never mentioned, names that mean nothing but, at some point, clearly did.

"You have a load of exes," Jack comments, glancing over at _his _partner (now) who is fixing the runners on the drawers of the filing cabinet.

"If you say so," Ianto replies vaguely, and Jack frowns.

"Why so many? You're only twenty-five. I didn't have this many when I was twenty-five."

"I doubt you even remember, Jack," Ianto sighs. "Yes, I had a lot. But they want all of it – the casual, couple-of-weeks girlfriends as well as the serious ones. So really..."

"Still," Jack says doubtfully.

"I was a lonely teenager, alright?" Ianto shrugged. "Girls liked me, and I suppose I just wanted someone to give a damn. So I dated. Possibly more than you, at one stage."

Jack covers it up with a smile and a joke, but something stings at the idea that Ianto searched so diligently for someone to care.

Because he's seen that expression on his face sometimes, and Jack realises that Ianto is still searching.

* * *

**One Hundred and Five**

Gwen says he knows more about Jack than anyone, but Ianto doesn't think that's strictly true. He knows that he could, if he wanted to, but he doesn't bow to that temptation.

"He's your..."

"My whatever."

"Your whatever, then, and you know nothing about his...I don't know...his history, at least?" Gwen had demanded.

"No," Ianto said, "because if I don't pry into his, he can't pry into mine."

* * *

**One Hundred and Six**

Eons later, when Torchwood is a name degraded, and something no sane person would support, people find it strange that Jack keeps a photograph, preserved behind glass, of the original Torchwood staff, at the original facility.

He keeps it, despite the face of Yvonne Hartman, because there is another face in that crowd that he does remember, that makes him smile and cry in the same motion, but he can't remember why.

* * *

**One Hundred and Seven**

It frustrates Jack, sometimes, that Ianto has had twenty-five years of practice at being so completely invisible. So much practice that he can slip away if Jack is distracted for even a second; that he can spend hours God-knows-where, and Jack doesn't notice his absence; that he can absent himself completely from even team conversations and disappear like a ghost.

Jack doesn't want to remember ghosts.

* * *

**One Hundred and Eight**

Jack has started to deliberately relocate the cereal boxes in Ianto's flat to the top of the kitchen cupboards. They're just high enough that Ianto has to stretch; but just low enough that he won't bother to stand on a chair to reach. And, of course, when he stretches, his t-shirt rides up and exposes a long, flat expanse of rigid stomach and smooth, pale skin.

Sometimes Jack sits back and enjoys the view, and sometimes he acts on the ideas that the view gives him.

Especially if Ianto then bends down to get the milk out of the fridge.


	13. 109 to 115

**Notes: This is the final bunch of snapshots, guys. There will be no more at all. I will work my way through the rest of the requests, and then that will be it. This is not, however, a move to leaving the fandom whatsoever! Thank you all for your participation in this project, and I hope you've all enjoyed it as much as I have.**

* * *

**One Hundred and Nine**

It had been perhaps the only time that Jack truly appreciated Ianto's age. He wore sharp suits and a sharp face so much that it was easy to add ten years to his age, easier still to add fifty years to his mentality. But even the request to come and pick him up sounded younger, and the complete abandon on his face outside that pub in the night, the red glow from the cold lighting up his face, leaning on his mate and singing (probably obscene) drinking songs in Welsh with that group of other young men in matching rugby shirts...Jack remembered just how young Ianto should have been.

* * *

**One Hundred and Ten**

"It's cold," Jack said, for perhaps the five-hundredth time.

"I know!" Ianto snapped, for the five-hundred-and-first time. "I get it, Jack, it's cold. Now stop complaining about it."

"But," Jack began, thought about it, then said, "it's cold."

"I _know_!"

"My whole face is cold," Jack continued. "My forehead is cold. My eyes are cold - that can't be good. My nose is going to fall off with frostbite. My lips are cold..."

Ianto's hands clamped themselves to either side of his cold face, and a thorough, rough, deep kiss was delivered to the aforementioned lips. Jack grinned into the kiss, managing to get his arms around Ianto's back before the Welshman let go.

"There," Ianto snapped. "Now stop complaining that you're cold!"

"It's warmer like this," Jack admitted.

Ianto snorted, ripped Jack's scarf aside, and buried his own cold face against the burning warmth of Jack's neck, making the older man yelp in shock, surprise, and no small amount of displeasure.

"Yan, if you were cold," Jack said teasingly, hugging him close and wondering when they would be yelled at by Owen for 'sleeping on the job in all but bloody action', "then you should have said so."

"I know."

* * *

**One Hundred and Eleven**

"Come on a date with me."

They were the first words out of Jack's mouth, and he was in the flat and shutting the door before Ianto knew quite what was going on. In fact, before he could formulate a response at all, Jack had hauled him into the middle of the cluttered living room and was rather energetically spinning him in a dance.

"What happened?" Ianto asked suspiciously.

"Nothing," Jack said. "Felt like taking you out on a date. Haven't gotten to see much of you lately, it seems."

He kissed the captive hand and drew it up to his chest, forcing Ianto closer.

"You see me at work every day," Ianto said.

"You know what I mean," Jack said. "Speaking of work, how's the shoulder?"

"Fine," Ianto said. "And I do know what you mean. But..."

"But?" Jack questioned. "Come on. Just throw on some jeans and a t-shirt and we'll go out."

"And do what?"

"Don't know," Jack said. "But we'll do something. Just you and me."

"We could," Ianto suggested, "just dance in my living room."

"We could," Jack agreed. "Tell you what. We'll dance in your living room, get up to more nefarious things, and we'll go out this evening. Yes?"

Ianto laughed and let Jack pull him closer, into a slower, more peaceful dance. "Yes, all right."

* * *

**One Hundred and Twelve**

Ianto jerked awake with a gasp that turned into a harsh coughing fit, and Jack was roused, bleary-eyed and concerned, from his own doze. He smoothed back Ianto's sweat-soaked hair, and murmured nothings until the fit passed, then hugged him close and stroked long fingers over his back and shoulders.

"Bad dream?" he murmured.

"Mm," Ianto croaked, snagging a tissue from the nightstand and pressing it to his nose.

"How bad?" Jack probed, blue eyes worried. God knew they both had enough fodder for nightmares.

"Normal one," Ianto groused. "Me Mam with that bloody spatula from when I was a kid. And then she morphed into my third year English teacher and started throwing copies of _Romeo and Juliet _at me until I learned the balcony scene by heart."

Jack snickered. He could vaguely remember nightmares in a similar vein himself, a long time ago.

"Did you learn it?" he asked, and Ianto snorted, choked, and snorted again.

"Not bloody likely," he growled. "I'd rather kiss Owen."

Ianto was sadistic, Jack decided, leaving him with that mental image to sleep on.

* * *

**One Hundred and Thirteen**

"That was _beyond _avante-guarde."

Jack snickered and watched Ianto's glazed eyes rove the ceiling. If Jack didn't know much, much better, he would suggest that Ianto was on some kind of illegal narcotic.

"Way beyond," Ianto added.

"You enjoy my innovative ideas," Jack said firmly, sliding an arm around Ianto's sweat-slick chest and kissing the hair just above his ear. Hard. Enough to feel the heartbeat still stuttering under the warm, delicate skin.

"_Still_," Ianto said, "I...hope you don't expect me to be at work tomorrow."

"Long recovery time?" Jack asked.

"Four times in one hour," Ianto said, "is ridiculous. You need a _girlfriend_."

"Nah," Jack said. "You do just fine."

* * *

**One Hundred and Fourteen**

Ianto's cat and Jack had a definite feud going on. They were warring over Ianto's attention - whenever Jack came over, the cat was _there_, purring and rubbing around Ianto's legs and butting his hands with its head. It would curl up in his lap, and occupy his hands when they could be doing other things. And it would shed all over Jack's things, and get its tail in his coffee, and scratch him or hiss at him whenever he tried to pet it and make friends.

And Jack _swore _Ianto was on the cat's side.

* * *

**One Hundred and Fifteen**

Jack hadn't got there fast enough to stop Tamara from meeting Ianto. And from the look on her face - a face he'd once found incredibly attractive - she knew immediately who and what Ianto was. And Jack could have killed her when she said it - "He doesn't do love. You don't really think he love you, do you?" - but he had only taken half a dozen steps when Ianto spoke, a cool reply, and Jack's intentions changed from murdering her to loving him, and he smiled in spite of his anxiety.

"Yes, I really do."

**END.**


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